Fruit Leather Recipes

I feel kind of silly making a fruit leather recipe post because it's pretty simple, but if you haven't made them before, you may want to learn how.

Basically, you whip up some fruit in the blender, spread it out to dry, then tear it apart and eat!  I did skip a few steps in the drying, but I'll spell those out below.


I'm not making fruit leather will work on those round white dehydrators.  I've never had one, but all my friends who have tried with wax paper, haven't been successful.  I have an Excalibur 9 tray dehydrator with Teflex sheets (which are big slippery sheets of something that goes on top of each tray whenever you want to dehydrate something that could slip through the little holes in the trays which are like clear plastic mesh).  Now they call the Teflex sheets Paraflex.  They look just the same.  The only things I use the Teflex sheets for are crackers (because they start out liquid-y and need to be spread out) and fruit leather.  Maybe I'll discover another need later on.

I just made several sheets of fruit leather a week ago.  I tried the following combinations:

Mango (just sliced and blended alone)

Mango & Banana (1/2 and 1/2 blended)

Peach (blended alone)

Peach and Plum (2/3 and 1/3)

Plum and Frozen Strawberries (1/2 and 1/2)

Plum, Frozen Strawberries, and Frozen Triple Berry Blend (1/4, 1/4, 1/2)

Out of all of them, I'd say the Peach is my very favorite, followed by Peach/Plum.  I really love dried mangoes (just mine, not the ones from the store), but they're really chewy and hard to eat unless you just let them melt in your mouth.  So I thought the mango leather would be fabulous.  I was really disappointed when it came warm out of the dehydrator.  BUT, a few days later when I tried it again, it was pretty tasty.  Perhaps the flavor just had to sit for a bit.  I don't know.

They were all good.  The only one I need to identify and throw out is one of the last triple berry blend.  Two of those turned out fine.  They're really tart, but good.  One of the sheets must have had overripe fermenting plums because it tasted like alcohol and wasn't so good.  I did throw in some super ripe plums, but tested many of them as I went.  I must have either missed the ripest or maybe it fermented more in the drying process.  I know whenever I'd put kiwi in my fruit leather, it ferments and ruins the taste of the leather.

So here are the steps more formally written:

Fruit Leather

Puree fruit of your choice in the blender

Pour fruit puree onto Teflex or Paraflex sheet (on top of dehydrator tray).  Spread with spatula if it doesn't look even.  (I was surprised that I barely needed the spatula).

Put tray in the dehydrator.

Makes as many as you can at once to make good use of your energy.

Set temperature to just under 110 degrees -- I usually shoot for 106-108.  

Let dehydrate all day or overnight. 

Check fruit leather to see if it's dry on top.  If it is, flip the Teflex sheet over onto the dehydrator tray and start peeling the Teflex sheet off.  If the leather is sticking too much or is too moist underneath, let dry longer.  If it's dry enough, take the Teflex sheet completely off and set the moist side up with the dry side down on the tray.

Put tray back in dehydrator and let dry for a few more hours.

Once completely dry, take out the fruit leather, tear into smaller rectangles and roll up.  

Put rolled leather in zip loc bags or start eating right away!